With the technical development of optical storage media, ever greater information densities and ever lower production costs have enabled these media, especially the simple compact disk (CD), to become mass-produced articles which have found many applications in the meantime as information carriers. Thus at the present time, instead of brochures, CDs are distributed as advertising and can provide the user, via a personal computer, a large quantity of information as to the respective business. It should be noted that the designation “CD” as used below is to be understood not only as a CD in the conventional sense but to include also other comparable media like DVD or CDRWs (rewritable CDs).
In the course of developments, CDs have been conceived as business cards which can have the rectangular format of a credit card. In this case, the CD is cut to the shape of the credit card and on its upper side is printed as an information text. In another embodiment, a business card of plastic has as its reverse side, a disk on which the information is stored. For this type of information and advertising carrier, CDs of a size of 80 millimeters are used which permit playing in a standard drive. Corresponding to the standard, the cards have on their rear sides guide structures which are intended for the centering and thus reliable retention of the card in the recess of the drive.
It is however problematical with the known cards that they encounter problems when used in standard drives and can give rise to complete destruction of the drive. The problematical phase in the playing of the card is the end phase when the rotation of the card is braked and the card drops into the recess. At this moment, the card, which is poorly guided in the recess, can have its edges ride on the edge of the recess provided in the drive. The resulting imbalance produces a jamming of the card in the drive. The drive thus cannot ensure sufficiently stable storage of the cards used heretofore. The problems which then result can damage the ability of the card to serve for advertising purposes and the damage to the drive can give rise to the need for indemnification for the damage by the distributor of the card.
A further problem of the heretofore used card is that the information region or medium region, thus the described structure of the medium, must be protected from external effects in that the cards must be packed in protective sleeves. Such a protective sleeve does not contribute to convenience and customer-friendly handling of the card and its acceptance and advertising effectiveness is reduced.